


Deduction, Translation, and Other Domestic Arts

by tei



Category: 221B Baker Towers, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 12:24:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16702501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tei/pseuds/tei
Summary: A refugee translator, a cop who never was, and the city they care for.





	Deduction, Translation, and Other Domestic Arts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [language_escapes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/language_escapes/gifts).



> Many thanks to [hpswl_cumbercookie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HPswl_cumbercookie/pseuds/HPswl_cumbercookie) for reading early stages of this and helping with naming, and [Luthe](https://luthe.dreamwidth.org/) for catching errors and relationship building suggestions!
> 
> I waffled about whether to mark this "no warnings" or "major character death." In case it matters to someone-- Holmes and Watson are both alive and remain that way; another character, who is usually understood in fandom to be a major character, has been deceased since before the beginning of that action in this story.

The man with the hands is back. 

John leans against the counter, watching him angle towards the door in the few precious seconds where he can see the customer, but they can’t see him. After the shop was robbed almost a year ago, Marco, the owner of the pawn shop where John has worked for the past four months since he came to London, opted to replace the broken window pane in the top half of the door with one-way glass. It was an utterly idiotic decision; more than the shop could really afford, and didn’t do a goddamn thing to deter robbers and vandals. Still, it isn’t John’s problem that Marco has no goddamn sense. And now he can lean against the counter and watch the customers come in with unfettered curiosity for a few precious moments, trying to suss out who they are and what they might be looking to procure or get rid of. 

The man entering now, though— the one with the hands— is a regular. In almost every week, with no pattern whatsoever to his requests. John imagined at first that he was a garden-variety break-and-enter type, looking to get rid of odds and ends. But he was looking for random, obscure items just as often as he was pawning them, so that didn’t make sense. 

Then he spent a while imagining, not entirely realistically, that the man was a pickpocket. John discovered quickly, upon arrival in London, that he needn’t be so protective of his wallet. There aren’t all that many decent pickpockets in Britain, not when most wallets contain nothing more than a fistful of change and a bunch of cards that can be cancelled with a quick call to the bank— but if ever there were fingers made for slipping imperceptibly into a tourist’s back pocket, it’s the long, elegant ones that spread out an array of counterfeit watches on the counter the very first time he’d come to the shop, asking brusquely if John had any that matched. 

John spread out an array of all the watches he could find around the shop, and the man plucked out his one and only choice with certainty. He was back often with similarly odd requests, and John found himself looking forward to his visits. Most of the repeat customers that a pawn shop gets aren’t all that pleasant. But this man is different. 

John smiles at him, a sincere one, as he sweeps his way into the shop. He’s much taller than John and really rather excessively thin, and when he lays his hands on the counter John stares at them a moment more than is really necessary. There are three small patches of angry purple skin marring the smooth dark brown of the back of his left hand-- acid burns, and John is certain they weren’t there the last time he was in. Before he can get too involved in imagining how they happen, John forces himself to wrench his eyes back up to the man’s face and says, “What can I do for you?”

To his surprise, the man digs in his wallet and then holds out a business card. “My name is Sherlock Holmes,” he says, and John takes the card. It’s not a proper business card, just a piece of cardboard cut into a small square and with an address, or rather a description of an address, scrawled on it in spikey writing: _Baker Towers. Corner of Baker and Druce. Unit 221._

 

Sherlock Holmes is staring at John with a ferocious intensity. He says, “If a man with a prosthetic leg comes in here in the next few days, to buy or to sell-- I need to you come tell me immediately.”

John is surprised for a moment, but since he’s come to expect something odd every time Sherlock is in, it passes quickly. “Uh, okay,” he says. “I’m John Watson. Nice to meet you properly. And, I mean, I will if I see one, but since most of our customers wear pants and shoes, no guarantees, mate.”

Sherlock’s eyes sparkle, which alleviates the sting of his mocking tone when he says, “Well, we can but try, I guess.” He shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans and bounces on his heels a little, momentarily distracted by the display case of ancient, dented trumpets and saxophones to the left of the counter. 

“You play?” says John, nodding his head towards the wall. 

John could swear that he actually winks when he says. “I smoke too much for that shit. Anyway. See you soon. Maybe.” John sees his torso just beginning to twist towards the door, still unable to break himself of the habit of watching every stranger’s slightest twitch for any hint of malicious intent towards him. But Sherlock isn’t about to throw a punch or pull out a gun, of course; he’s just going to leave. 

John feels a sudden tug towards him, and opens his mouth, half-hoping that some new question or topic of conversation will come out of it to draw Sherlock out, make him stay for a few more minutes. Nothing does, though, so instead, John just sticks out his right hand. Sherlock looks at it for a moment, amused, then shakes it with a mocking little bow. John laughs, but his skin is tingling where Sherlock Holmes touched it as he slips the card with his address into his pocket. 

***

John, having been identified cheerfully by Marco as the only employee with two brain cells to rub together, is frequently entrusted with researching and pricing odds and ends that come into the shop when Marco isn’t around. This, though, could hardly be called an odd or an end. 

It’s a violin. And although the man who had brought it in had been cagey enough about its whereabouts that John is almost certain it was stolen, there hasn’t been anything of the sort reported when John calls the local police precinct to check, so he peers at it critically with a more or less clear conscience, wondering what on earth it’s worth. 

Pete McIntyre picks up the phone on the first ring. John’s hands are tangled in the fabric of his trousers with nerves. He and Pete had gotten along, well enough that Pete had awkwardly handed him a slip of paper with his phone number on it before shipping back home and said “ring me if you’re ever in Britain, yeah?” Pete, of course, had known just as well as John that John was more likely to be found with a Taliban bullet in the back of his head than ever casually give him a call on his British mobile number. John had just smiled and said thanks, with no desire to acknowledge the elephant in the room in the last moments of their friendship. 

So he weathers Pete’s poorly-disguised shock and relief with good humour, and gives him a brief rundown of his new life. “I feel very fortunate,” he acknowledges at the end of it, the only nod to circumstance that he allows himself. 

He hears Pete breathing a little quickly over the phone line. “Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, I guess you were. Jesus.”

“I actually have a question for you,” says John, steering the conversation back on track. “I seem to remember you saying you had an uncle who dealt in violins. I have a violin here that I’m wondering what it’s worth. Do you think you could help me out?”

Pete can help him out. He asks John a few questions about the thing. Apparently, the fact that it has a sticker on the inside that says “Stradivarius” is more a sign of a Chinese factory with a sense of humour than of venerable craftsmanship. Cheap wood, 2-piece back, varnish peeled off in places, splinters spidering out from the f-holes. Now that Pete has had him describe every part of the instrument, John can recognize that it was cheap to begin with and is probably nearly worthless in this state of disrepair. They chat for a while, and he hangs up with an empty promise to come visit Pete at his place in Chelmsford.

Okay, so it’s a busted-up fake. Still. John gazes at the thing resting in its case, the wood matte and unassuming but still somehow demanding, like John would be letting it down by letting just _anyone_ get their hands on it. Which, after all, is the whole point of a pawn shop. 

Before John can think better of it, he sets the price of the thing at twenty pounds in the logbook. Perhaps a little low, even for what it is, but there’s no reason for Marco to ever find out-- he rarely bothers checking John’s work. John has been hoping to eat a meal that wasn’t fast food some time soon, but today is not that day-- before he can think better of it, he pulls out twenty quid from his wallet, slaps it in the register, and snaps the lid of the case closed. He places the violin case carefully beside his backpack. 

When John closes the store that evening, he pulls out the card from his wallet and finds himself standing before a nondescript block of inexpensive flats.

The name-plate in the lobby for unit 221 says “Maggie Hudson” on it. When he knocks at 221, as indicated on the card, the door is opened by a plump, friendly-faced woman holding the handle of a vacuum cleaner in her left hand. “Hi,” says John. “I’m looking for Sherlock Holmes?”

She nods knowingly. “You want apartment 221 _b_ ," she says, and John startles a little at her accent; something Caribbean, and a flare of professional pride makes him wish he could place it more accurately. He shakes that thought out of his head as she opens the door wider. “Come on in. I’m Maggie. Sherlock is right through there.”

John steps inside, and sees that Maggie’s apartment is bisected by a blue tarp, in front of which she’s placed enough bookshelves to almost let it pass as a wall. Another tarp hangs along the side of the room, making a passageway from the front door to the other side, which she gestures towards and John starts walking down. On the white wall just in front of where the other side of the room begins, someone has scrawled “221b” on the wall in black marker.

He can hear voices from the other side of the tarp, and hesitates. He places the violin case on the ground, and as he raises his hand to knock on the wall, he hears Sherlock Holmes’ voice. 

“It’ll take two or three hours of thinking, but yeah. No problem. Call you tomorrow. Now get out of my flat and let me work, Lestrade.”

Another voice, female, and getting close to where John is standing: “Charming as always, Sherlock. Have a good night. And buy some actual food with that, please.”

The tarp is pushed to the side by a muscular woman in a constable’s uniform and a halo of neat braids pulled into a ponytail. She doesn’t seem surprised to find John lurking outside the room; instead, she merely gives him a reassuring smile and holds the tarp open for him to enter. 

He does, and finds Sherlock standing with his back to the room, staring out the small window on the opposite side. Like on the other side, he’s fashioned a makeshift wall with a motley assortment of furniture. There are bookshelves overflowing with newspapers and magazines and a cabinet with various electronic bits and bobs shoved behind a glass door and the top shelf distractingly overflowing with what seem to be animal bones. Two filing cabinets are stacked on top of each other, one drawer open to reveal rows of neatly organized files that seem the one exception to the chaos of the room. 

“Who was that, then?” John asks. 

Sherlock turns. “I’m her CI,” he says. 

“Oh,” says John, rather at a loss for how to respond to that admission from a near-stranger. There are plenty of British cultural norms he’s still trying to get a handle on, but he’s pretty damn sure that isn’t the kind of thing you spread around the neighborhood. 

Sherlock grins wolfishly at his confusion. “Consulting Investigator,” he says. “When the police are out of their depth-- which is every fuckin’ week, and would be every day if they were honest with themselves-- they come to me. Well, the ones who can swallow their pride hard enough to be seen here do. That was Gina. She’s not that bad.” He picks up a wad of cash from the table, waving it cheerfully. “Pays me out of her own pocket, the absolute sap.”

“Wow,” says John. He can’t tell how much money it is, but it’s more than he’s got in his own wallet, that’s for sure. 

“You’ve been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” His mouth quirks, as if he’s used to not quite being taken seriously when he talks like. Which is only natural because, honestly, talk about stating the obvious. John laughs. “What gave it away? My accent? Or you’ve just actually seen a Pashtun man before?”

Sherlock scowls, apparently irritated that John wasn’t more impressed despite his self-deprecating tone when he’d made the comment. “No,” he says. “The watches you showed me the first time I came in. And the contents of your car out back. Your accent is ambiguous, actually, although I could make a further study of it.”

John raises his eyebrows. 

“Fine,” Sherlock admits. “Too easy. I can do better.” He whirls around, grabbing a copy of the Daily Mail out from under a pile of of letters and papers from one of the shelves of the bookshelf. He tosses it to John and says, “Read me something.” Then he throws himself down on a hideous leopard-print beanbag chair in the opposite corner, steepling his fingers under his chin and closing his eyes.

“Okay,” mutters John. He glances down at the paper, intentionally choosing the most ludicrous-seeming article and starting in the middle of it. “The reality star, 29, attended the launch party for Dan's new cannabis company this week,” he reads, “where she said rappers and athletes mingled and only 'attractive women' were allowed inside.” He glances up at Sherlock, who is furrowing his brow in concentration. He continues: “Dan is reportedly worth $100 million, making the bulk of his cash as a high-stakes gambler after developing his skills as a student at the University of South Florida. He has won multiple tournaments--”

He cuts off as Sherlock grabs the paper from his hands and throws it back into a pile.

“You’re ethnically half Pashtun, half Slavic,” says Sherlock. “You grew up in Kabul with your mother, and learned English mainly from British TV as a child. Worked as a translator during the war, which is when you took on the name “John Watson”-- for a measure of anonymity, and for the comfort of your British colleagues. When the Taliban threats got too much for you, you ended up in a refugee camp in… Germany.” He glances up at John, seemingly looking for confirmation on this point, but John is frankly too gobsmacked to give it. 

“You were granted refugee status in Great Britain with this assistance of the NGO Red T-- that bit is from your keychain, by the way, not your accent, don’t give me too much credit-- and arrived here four months ago. You work in a pawn shop, sleep in your car, and eat mostly fast food, which isn’t doing wonders for your body, I gotta tell you.”

John’s heart is racing, and he suddenly feels light-headed. He’s alone in a near-stranger’s flat, and that stranger seems to know everything about him, and the situation is screaming _get out get out get out_ at him in the percussive rhythm of discarded bullet casings and far-off IEDs. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to will himself back under control. 

He snaps back to attention when he feels a gentle hand on his arm. Sherlock is leading him to the horrific beanbag chair, and pushing him gently to sit on it with his head hanging between his knees. “Shit,” John hears Sherlock’s voice float gently through his haze, gentle despite the profanity. “Sorry. Too far. Kind of a bad habit of mine.”

John’s heart rate slows over an excruciating few minutes, during which Sherlock avoids looking at him, tapping out a message on his mobile. Finally, when he can, John sighs significantly and Sherlock glances back over at him. 

John forces himself not to apologize. Since Sherlock has just succinctly summed up his recent history and circumstances, any explanation John could offer for his own skittishness has likely already occurred to him. 

“Okay, well, that’s not actually what I came here for,” John says, trying to push himself awkwardly to standing from the squishy beanbag.

Sherlock nods. “You didn’t have anyone come in with a prosthetic.” 

“No. I, uh…” John finally succeeds in staggering to his feet, feeling suddenly awkward and embarrassed. Not about the panic attack-- he’s proud enough of the work he’s done in his life so far not to be ashamed of the ramifications it had on his psyche. But now that he’s about to actually do this, it feels… silly. Extravagant. Completely ridiculous, really, to come gift a violin to a man he’s just met who, to the best of his knowledge, isn’t even a musician. Just because it feels right. 

Still, he’s committed now. “Hold on a tick,” he says, and before he can think better of it, he sweeps the blue tarp open for a moment and grabs the violin case he left on the other side of it. He places it on the small table, beside the wad of cash from Lestrade, and opens the case.

“Just came in today,” he says, “and I thought of you. You have a musician’s hands.”

He feels Sherlock come to stand beside him. John forces himself to stare at the thing resolutely, not looking at the other man, not wanting to know if the look on his face is incredulous, or mocking, or blank confusion. 

He hears a short intake of breath beside him, and then Sherlock Holmes says, “Come live with me.” 

_”What?_

“You heard me.” Sherlock is staring at him intently enough that John feels compelled to turn and look at him, like a plant that can’t resist turning its face to the sun, and the taller man’s face is open and entirely earnest. “You live in your car right now, for fuck’s sake. I can put a mattress in the other corner, it’s no trouble. I’m out most of the night anyway. You can cook in Maggie’s kitchen. It’ll be good for you. Come live with me.”

John’s mouth just hangs open for a moment, before his brain catches up and he says, “Okay, that’s-- really generous. And a mattress does sound nice, to be honest. But I like my privacy. I don’t think I would do well sleeping in a flat with a bunch of other people, to be honest.”

“Ah,” says Sherlock softly. 

“Yeah.”

“Can I…?” Sherlock’s hand reaches tentatively towards the violin. 

“Of course,” says John. “It’s yours, if you want it.”

Sherlock reaches out and winds his fingers around the neck of the instrument. He lifts it and looks undecided, for a moment, before simply tucking it under one arm, where he can reach up and pluck the strings softly. It’s horrendously out of tune, or at least John has to assume it is. It certainly doesn’t sound _good_ , when Sherlock plucks it. John isn’t even sure how you’re supposed to tune a violin, but Sherlock is, apparently, quite smart. He’ll figure it out. The dissonant little pricks of sound float between them for a few moments. 

“You’re right about the fast food, though,” says John pensively.

Sherlock glances at him sideways, and there is an undeniable glimmer of hope in his face. 

“Maybe… I could come ‘round every so often to cook?”

Sherlock’s face splits into a grin, and John only starts a little when he suddenly springs into action and bellows across the tarp, “Maggie! Get John Watson a key to the flat!”

***

The next evening, John is jittering with nerves when he knocks on the door of flat 221 with a giant bag of basmati rice and a selection of the best that the corner store had to offer in meat and vegetables. Most of the kitchen equipment, he’d noticed, was on Maggie’s side of the apartment, and although she had cheerfully handed him a spare key and told him to come on over any time, it had been Sherlock’s idea to have him, and he can’t shake off the feeling that he was imposing. But his stomach is beginning to turn at the thought of one more cheap American-style hamburger, so here he is.

As it turns out, he needn’t have worried. Sherlock isn’t there the first night-- which she assures him isn’t unusual around the dinner hour-- but Maggie is absolutely thrilled to see him, and they end up cooking together every night that week. John brings a few staples and his mother’s recipes, and Maggie has a decent pantry of spices, and the first time Sherlock bangs through the door while they’re talking and laughing in the kitchen, he has to work hard to contain his surprise and delight at the smell of the stew simmering on the burner. 

“This is-- huh,” he stammers, inching around them like a bashful child. Maggie rolls her eyes. “Sit down, you,” she orders, and he does, and John finds that it is perfectly natural for the three of them to sit down to dinner like a family that have been sharing stories about their day for years. 

John does the sharing, mostly. Sherlock is constantly fascinated by the array of characters who show up at the pawn shop, and frequently asks for clarifying details when John describes his clientele, their possessions and desires. He just as frequently offers clarifying details to John, fitting objects that pass through John’s hands neatly into narratives of crime and punishment that would seem ludicrous if the proof weren’t in the bashful police constables who knock on the door during supper occasionally, with whom Sherlock returns to his side of the flat to consult with and who leave him more of less discreet piles of cash in thanks. 

After a few weeks of comfortably familial dinners, with Sherlock flitting in and out, John amuses himself during a lull at the shop by drawing up a list, with half a mind to present it to Sherlock with his name removed and ask him what he could deduce about the person described.

_Sherlock Holmes: his limits._

_Books: no fiction at all._

_Selective but occasionally deep knowledge of foreign affairs. Decent understanding of British politics._

_Knows a frankly disturbing amount about the chemical makeup of various street drugs._

_Can tell at a glance different soils from each other. He enjoys coming to dinner with mud all over his trousers, and narrating where it all came from._

_Rather a lot of human anatomy._

_Immense knowledge of the contents of every English-language tabloid on the continent, God knows why._

_Refuses to play the violin around me, but Maggie reports he is getting on rather well on the thing._

_Apparently a champion boxer in some seedier underground circles._

_Astounding knowledge of English legal doctrine. He could be a lawyer. Probably should be, come to think of it._

He shows the list to Sherlock, who just laughs delightedly and claps him on the back like they’ve known each other for years.

***

So John is pretty much ready for anything, Sherlock Holmes-wise, and isn’t too taken aback about a month and a half after John had started eating at his flat, when Sherlock sweeps his way into the shop again, slaps down a woman’s wedding ring on the counter, and refuses to take any money for it. 

“I need to know when this sells, and to whom,” he says. “Memorize everything about them. ‘Specially their sleeves and fingernails. As soon as it leaves the store, come get me. You in?” 

John just laughs, and lets Sherlock watch him carefully place the ring in the front of the jewelry display case. “Will you be in for dinner tonight?”

“No,” says Sherlock, which could mean anything from “I won’t be in the apartment at all” to “I’ll be slumped half under the table reading gossip rags while you eat.” 

The elderly woman who comes in as he exits greets him with a warm “Sherlock! Stay safe, dear!” is looking to get rid of a stash of antique books that she found in her father’s flat when he died. John feels a little guilty as he tells her that they don’t buy books-- Marco’s rules, not his-- but they do look quite nice. 

She just sighs dejectedly, but then John snaps to attention when she jerks her head towards the door that Sherlock has just exited out of. “I remember when he was just a wee little thing,” she tells John conspiratorially. “And when he wanted to join the Met, bless his heart. The bad business with his brother put him right off of it, and thank goodness for that. He’s much better off as he his now. Helped me out of a right spot of trouble, a few years back.” 

John feels his mouth open, and he’s about to ask her to elaborate, but then he closes it. Sherlock was able to pluck the evidence of John’s past right out of him, but that doesn’t mean it’s fair to do the same to him. 

“He’s a great customer,” he says to her instead, and she just laughs as she exits the shop.

***

As it turns out, the ring doesn’t sell, and John doesn’t get the chance to inspect anyone’s sleeves or fingernails.

That night John wakes, back aching in protest as usual at his second-hand car’s lumpy cushions. There are sirens everywhere, which isn’t _unusual,_ exactly, but John has no desire to be woken up by an inspector’s rap on his window, so he rubs the sleep out of his eyes and hauls himself out of the back seat into the clear night air. 

Oh. The night air is, in fact, not clear at all. It’s thick with smoke. And the sirens are only partly police; most of them are the fire service, who are hosing down John’s place of employment. From the amount of smoke billowing out of the building, probably his _former_ place of employment.

It so happens that the first officer he sees when he staggers around to the front of the thoroughly burned-out building is the woman from Sherlock’s apartment. Gina Lestrade asks him for a statement, not asking too many questions about why he was in his car behind the pawn shop at-- it turns out to be-- three in the morning. Apparently his shock and horror is evidence enough that he isn’t a suspect. 

Then Lestrade asks, “Did Sherlock sell you anything recently?”

Like John would forget any of Sherlock’s visits. “A ring,” he says. “Well, he didn’t sell it, he— planted it. Said to come get him as soon as it sold. That was just yesterday.”

Lestrade grimaces and writes that down. John contemplates simply climbing back into his car and going back to sleep. Instead, like his feet have a mind of their own, he finds himself walking through the dim streets in the direction of Baker Towers. 

There doesn’t seem to be any way of getting to Sherlock without waking up Maggie, which John feels bad about, but he still raps crisply on the door. “Sorry,” he says softly to her when she opens it, wearing a thick jumper against the cold flat and squinting at the light. “I need to… he gestures towards Sherlock’s side of the room. 

Maggie is probably accustomed to nighttime visitors, John thinks as she just lets him in wordlessly and falls back into her bed, her phone emitting a loud stream of white noise to mask the sounds of the building and her eccentric neighbor.

Sherlock doesn’t seem to have been asleep, which somehow fits with what John knows of him. He’s standing in the centre of the room waiting of John, wearing a ratty flannel dressing gown and very possibly nothing else, which would be a distraction if John weren’t very, very distracted already. 

“So,” he says, “Whoever you thought was going to come for that ring… came for it, all right. In the night. And _burned down the fucking building_ for good measure.” 

Sherlock’s eyes go wide, and it would be more gratifying to see flat-out shock spread across Sherlock Holmes’ face if John hadn’t rather been hoping that Sherlock had the situation under control in some way. Sherlock schools his expression quickly, and his expression metamorphoses into something that resembles a bomb-sniffing dog that’s just picked up a fresh scent. 

“Fascinating,” he breathes.

“Yeah,” says John, “Only, not particularly for me, because that’s where I _worked._ "

Sherlock looks at John, _really_ looks at him, like he might be either a side of meat or the glittering view through a crystal ball. “How would you like to catch the person who did it?”

John shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Tempting,” he says. In all of the meals that he, Maggie and Sherlock have shared, Sherlock had never talked in-depth about being a… a CI. He was good, though, as evidenced by the Scotland Yard types trying not to be seen as they traipsed in and out of his flat, and the demonstration of his skills he’d given on John’s own personal history. “But… that won’t put food on the table, I don’t think.”

“You’ll have a cut of what I earn from the Force,” Sherlock says quickly. “And with a colleague, I can-- we can do more. Take on more cases. Get a bigger place.”

John throws himself down in the hideous beanbag chair, steepling his fingers in conscious imitation of his friend. Sherlock waits, visibly nervous, watching him. 

John looks around. “Why do you do this, anyway?” he asks. “Why don’t you just work for the police, if they consult you all the time anyway?”

A framed photo lands in his lap, and Sherlock leans back against the shelf on the other side of his room. 

“Try it out,” he says, smiling a little. “What can you deduce from this?”

John looks first at the space on the bookshelf where the picture usually stands. Although the majority of the shelves are in chaos, the small corner that is now vacant is neat, a small square where this photo has pride of place. 

The frame is inexpensive but clean, with real glass in the front that’s clearly dusted regularly. The photo inside is an official photo of a police constable. He has the same dark skin, long nose and piercing eyes as Sherlock, but he is all developed muscle where Sherlock is long and lean, and his new uniform sits stiffly on his broad shoulders. He’s smiling proudly, a little nervously, sitting up with his shoulders thrust back in the uncomfortable posture John recognizes very well from the soldiers he translated for. 

He flicks his eyes up at Sherlock. “This is your brother,” he says. He feels compelled to add, “But I cheated a bit on that, because--” 

Sherlock waves a hand, cutting him off. “No matter. You are correct: that is Mycroft Holmes, my older brother. What else?”

John takes a deep breath. Completely besides the old woman’s mention of bad business with Sherlock’s brother, nobody meticulously dusts a single photo in their entire flat when they can nip down the street to pay a visit to the person in it. “He died,” says John confidently, and Sherlock nods. John looks back down at the photo, and adds, “in the line of duty, I think. You wanted to follow in his footsteps until his death, and after, you struck out on your own.” 

Sherlock doesn’t answer, and John knows he’s got it right. He pushes himself to standing from the beanbag chair, and replaces the photo on the shelf carefully. It brings him closer to Sherlock, who is still leaning against the shelf, staring at John with a mixture of pleasure at John’s success, and the faraway look of remembering the dead that John knows all too well. 

Sherlock breaks the silence as he strides over to look out the small window at the scrubby patch of London visible outside. “Mycroft was the smartest guy I knew,” he says finally. “He woulda preferred to sit around all day using his brain and nothing else-- but he didn’t. Because he knew justice is real, and it’s out there, but not everybody gets a shot at it.”

“That’s true,” murmurs John, remembering the first time he was called in to translate between local forces and US troops because the previous translator had been kidnapped and shot. He’d worn a mask over his face, terrified of being recognized and punished for trying to bring understanding where there had been none before.

Sherlock’s fists clench, just slightly, when he says, “He didn’t realize it would be true for him, as well.”

There’s a story here; John can feel it. But Sherlock isn’t going to tell it to him tonight. With a feeling of dawning realization, John understands that he doesn’t have to. 

They’ll have time, now. 

Sherlock turns away from the window and meets his eyes. “There’s work out there to do,” he says. “I do it in my own way, on my own terms, for my own people. Does that interest you?”

***

John sleeps in the corner of Sherlock’s room that evening, surrounded by the detritus of a murder case that Sherlock explains to him over endless cups of cardamom tea. 

And the next morning, he leaves briefly and returns to the flat after having retrieved the rest of his meager possessions from the car next to the burned-out building. He finds his way to his new home by the sound of slow but masterful scales on the violin.

**Author's Note:**

> Watson is so often presented as a sort of emotional translator in adaptions-- between Holmes and clients, between Holmes and the audience-- that I liked the idea of making it literal in this character. [Red T](https://red-t.org/about.html) is a real organization that works to protect translators and interpreters in conflict zones, and many translators in Afghanistan were kidnapped, killed or (if they were lucky) received protective custody as a result of their involvement. 
> 
> Watson's being from Afghanistan, instead of a British soldier who had been stationed there, and Holmes' being understood as a confidential informant by the police force, are both taken from various tumblr posts in this fandom, although I can't for the life of me find them again (because, tumblr.)


End file.
